New Year’s celebrations quickly turned to consultations with calendars as Edina Robotics FIRST Team 1816 adjusted from holiday break to school to Kickoff and six weeks to build a robot. Kickoff meant arriving early to Coffman Union on the University of Minnesota campus to set up and prepare to register and sign in 79 other FIRSTTeams from around the state. They came for the Kickoff broadcast and to take home their kit of parts. There are no instructions included, and FIRST teams have only six weeks to build a robot capable of playing the 2011 game, “LOGO MOTION.” Robots will have 2 minutes and 15 seconds to place as many innertubes on a rack as possible. Complicating matters: The scoring racks are placed directly in front of robot driver’s stations, blocking the view, plus the innertubes are circles, squares and triangles. Teams this year also can include a “minibot” that can attempt to climb a 10’ steel pole at the end of game play to win 30 bonus points!
The team’s CAD (computer-assisted design) and robot-build subteams immediately began drawing and prototyping possible gears, elevators and arms to accomplish both the placement of the innertubes and the deployment of a minibot. By Tuesday night after Kickoff, we even had a prototype of a working claw! Team alumni enthusiastically joined in our two-day brainstorm session. One team alum even brought in a minibot made of Lego pieces and showed how it could (slowly) climb a broomstick. In this way it was neat to see all of our new team members come together with our graduated team members and formulate great ideas for this year’s game.
FIRST Team 1816 will ship its robot to the Lake Superior Regional, Duluth, for competition at the DECC March 10 – 12, 2011. Then we will compete again March 31 – April 2 at the Minnesota North Star Regional, which takes place at Mariucci Arena on the University of Minnesota campus.